The crowd flowed all night, 20 people wide and a kilometre long,
from the Tiber River into St Peter's. They brought coats and
blankets for the cold night, caps and parasols for the sun.

They were mainly Italians but there were Indians, Chileans,
Africans and many Polish flags, and they all moved quietly up Via
della Conciliazone and into St Peter's, where Pope John Paul II lay
in state. One roughly painted banner said: "We are not afraid - you
are with us".

By yesterday morning more than half a million had taken a last
look at the waxen face - the cheeks perhaps a little pinkened by
the embalmers - of the 84-year-old pontiff. Sydney Archbishop
George Pell, in Rome for Friday's funeral and the cardinals'
conclave to elect a new pope, called it an event "unprecedented in
papal history".

The waiting pilgrims talked on mobile phones or filmed their
journey, as they passed huge screens showing the body inside the
church. Latin chants played from speakers along the road.

"I've come to see him make his journey to paradise," said
Aniello Bagnati, 19, who stood with seven or eight friends from
Herculaneum near Naples. How a frail, old, and conservative Pole
inspired such devotion among so many young people is one of the
mysteries of this papacy.

Carolina Capitanio came with edelweiss. Before boarding the bus
that drove all Monday night from Milan to Rome she had plucked the
white flower from her home in Bergamo in the foothill of the
Alps.

In 1997 she had taken her son Mose, then 12, to see the Pope at
a youth gathering in Paris. He couldn't come yesterday because he
is on military service but in the group with Mrs Capitanio was
Angelica dei Vecchi, 18.

"My grandfather died when I was young and he was like my
grandfather," she said.

Angelica only ever saw the Pope on TV and once, far away, in St
Peter's Square. But like many others keeping vigil, she considered
"il Papa" - which in Italian means both Pope and father - as
family.

On Monday afternoon, the Herald joined a line of
journalists and 1500 Vatican employees - about half the total - who
viewed the body in the Clementina Room. Entering the ornate room
covered in Baroque frescoes where diplomats present their
credentials, visitors saw first the upraised soles of the Pope's
black leather shoes.

Two Swiss Guards, carrying pikes and dressed in their uniform of
red, yellow and blue stripes, stood guard as a single paschal
candle flickered by the body. Sun streamed through open
windows.

Pope John Paul lay on a catafalque beneath a simple, black cross
bearing a white Christ. The Pope's seal, taken at the moment of
death, was absent but he wore a gold ring and a rosary was entwined
in his pale fingers.

Priests and lay people prayed in pews on either side, but there
were no tears. The mood of the room matched that of the crowds in
the square, which has been relief, as well as sadness, since the
Pope died on Saturday night.

All week the square has felt like a medieval pageant, with flags
fluttering, people playing guitars and singing religious songs, and
shrines of candles and offerings formed around lamp posts and the
two fountains known as 'Scripture' and 'Tradition'.

At 5pm on Monday, led by a procession of choristers, priests,
bishops and cardinals, the Pope's body made its final journey on a
bier from the Clementina Room in the Vatican Palace, through the
Bronze Door and into St Peter's Square. When the bier reached the
square the crowd burst into applause. The air was thick with
incense as people jostled to see and photograph the body. The
former actor Karol Wojtyla had performed his final exit scene, on a
17th century set designed by Michelangelo, Bramante and Bernini, in
the kind of spectacle only the Catholic Church can stage.

After the procession climbed the stairs into the church, a
section of the crowd began to chant: "Santo! Santo!" ("Saint!
Saint!") The canonisation campaign had well and truly begun.